Freezing websites is not legitimate protest

2:13 PM,
Jan. 22, 2013

Written by

Gene Policinski

The Web-based protest group Anonymous is asking the White House to consider endorsing a kind of website attack as protected by the First Amendment.

The group claims the cyberattack tactic - which effectively freezes targeted Web pages for a time - should be protected as a new-age form of assembly and protest.

"Instead of a group of people standing outside a building to occupy the area, they are having their computer occupy a website to slow (or deny) service of that particular website for a short time," says a line in the posted petition on the White House site, "We the People." ...